science fictionalhttps://sciencefictional.net
image collateral > speculative non-fiction > sf aestheticsThu, 24 May 2018 07:34:49 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/3ae4cf472d68683cba4ea1d2d5d1c546?s=96&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs0.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.pngscience fictionalhttps://sciencefictional.net
“You’re talking about memories…”https://sciencefictional.net/2018/05/24/youre-talking-about-memories/
https://sciencefictional.net/2018/05/24/youre-talking-about-memories/#respondThu, 24 May 2018 07:29:11 +0000http://sciencefictional.net/?p=2317Continue reading "“You’re talking about memories…”"]]>“UCLA biologists report they have transferred a memory from one marine snail to another, creating an artificial memory, by injecting RNA from one to another. This research could lead to new ways to lessen the trauma of painful memories with RNA and to restore lost memories.

“I think in the not-too-distant future, we could potentially use RNA to ameliorate the effects of Alzheimer’s disease or post-traumatic stress disorder,” said David Glanzman, senior author of the study and a UCLA professor of integrative biology and physiology and of neurobiology. The team’s research is published May 14 in eNeuro, the online journal of the Society for Neuroscience.

“RNA, or ribonucleic acid, has been widely known as a cellular messenger that makes proteins and carries out DNA’s instructions to other parts of the cell. It is now understood to have other important functions besides protein coding, including regulation of a variety of cellular processes involved in development and disease.

“The researchers gave mild electric shocks to the tails of a species of marine snail called Aplysia. The snails received five tail shocks, one every 20 minutes, and then five more 24 hours later. The shocks enhance the snail’s defensive withdrawal reflex, a response it displays for protection from potential harm. When the researchers subsequently tapped the snails, they found those that had been given the shocks displayed a defensive contraction that lasted an average of 50 seconds, a simple type of learning known as “sensitization.” Those that had not been given the shocks contracted for only about one second.

“The life scientists extracted RNA from the nervous systems of marine snails that received the tail shocks the day after the second series of shocks, and also from marine snails that did not receive any shocks. Then the RNA from the first (sensitized) group was injected into seven marine snails that had not received any shocks, and the RNA from the second group was injected into a control group of seven other snails that also had not received any shocks.

“Remarkably, the scientists found that the seven that received the RNA from snails that were given the shocks behaved as if they themselves had received the tail shocks: They displayed a defensive contraction that lasted an average of about 40 seconds.

“It’s as though we transferred the memory,” said Glanzman, who is also a member of UCLA’s Brain Research Institute.

“In the field of neuroscience, it has long been thought that memories are stored in synapses. (Each neuron has several thousand synapses.) Glanzman holds a different view, believing that memories are stored in the nucleus of neurons.

“If memories were stored at synapses, there is no way our experiment would have worked,” said Glanzman, who added that the marine snail is an excellent model for studying the brain and memory.”

“What resembles the wall of an exotic underground grotto is actually a work of art representing the circuitry of the brain in action. Engram / Remember is an incredible moving spectacle, forged from algorithms that convert data about brainwave activity into captivating imagery – this image shows just a single frame. The high-resolution screen starts off showing what seems to be a piece of paper ripping and folding into itself, then morphs into swirling shapes that wriggle and squirm around in an imaginary box.

“Artist Refik Anadol creates his “data paintings” and other works at the Neuroscape Laboratory at the University of California in San Francisco. He measures and records volunteers’ brainwave activity with electrodes placed on their scalp (pictured below), then uses fractal algorithms and neural nets to turn the data into these shape-shifting displays. Engram / Remember uses data taken from his own brain activity while he was recalling positive long-term memories, he says.”

]]>https://sciencefictional.net/2018/05/16/data-paintings/feed/0tezby“Read and write the language of the brain…”https://sciencefictional.net/2018/05/12/read-and-write-the-language-of-the-brain/
https://sciencefictional.net/2018/05/12/read-and-write-the-language-of-the-brain/#respondSat, 12 May 2018 05:12:31 +0000http://sciencefictional.net/?p=2311Continue reading "“Read and write the language of the brain…”"]]>“The therapeutic potential for the device is exciting. From helping to restore sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, to reinstating sensation in patients with peripheral nerve damage and helping amputees control prosthetic limbs.

“This has great potential for neural prostheses, since it has the precision needed for the brain to interpret the pattern of activation,” says Mardinly. “If you can read and write the language of the brain, you can speak to it in its own language and it can interpret the message much better.” Mardinly is already thinking beyond therapeutic uses, towards augmenting human experience: “This is one of the first steps in a long road to develop a technology that could be a virtual brain implant with additional senses or enhanced senses.”

“We’re still a ways off before you can plan your next staycation at a 3D Shot themed resort and spa. As of now, the researchers are testing a prototype in the visual, touch and motor areas of mice brains.

“The mice are showing similar patterns of neural response correlating to sensory stimuli. The next step is training the mice so scientists can observe behavior changes that correspond to the stimulation. Studying behavioral cues is the best measure of success because you can’t ask a mouse if it’s experiencing the ripe, mushroomy taste of Limburger cheese as you flash holograms into its cortex.

“The researchers plan to scale-up the device’s capacity to interpret and create from a broader terrain of brain matter while scaling-down the device to make it portable enough to slip inside a backpack.

“They’re also working towards capturing neural patterns inside the brain with the goal of reproducing sensory experience and playing it back through holography.”

]]>https://sciencefictional.net/2018/05/12/read-and-write-the-language-of-the-brain/feed/0tezby220px-Doubleslit3Dspectrum“We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical.”https://sciencefictional.net/2018/04/23/we-will-control-the-horizontal-we-will-control-the-vertical/
https://sciencefictional.net/2018/04/23/we-will-control-the-horizontal-we-will-control-the-vertical/#respondMon, 23 Apr 2018 07:00:19 +0000http://sciencefictional.net/?p=2304Continue reading "“We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical.”"]]>

There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image, make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next hour sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. We repeat: there is nothing wrong with your television set. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to… The Outer Limits.

Text: Outer Limits, opening narration.

Pics: “Luminant Point Arrays is a photographic series of old tube televisions taken at the very moment they are switched off. The TV picture breaks down and is abstracted to its essential element: light. This abstraction also results in the collapse of the external reference. Each of these photographs is from a different TV, but it’s also the length of exposure, timing, and time the TV has been running before the photo is taken that affects the results.” – Stephen Tillmans, Leuchtpunktordnungen.

]]>https://sciencefictional.net/2018/04/23/we-will-control-the-horizontal-we-will-control-the-vertical/feed/0tezby14360918678862010628a12010632a1“Nothing you could really call a nuclear war…”https://sciencefictional.net/2018/03/28/nothing-you-could-really-call-a-nuclear-war/
https://sciencefictional.net/2018/03/28/nothing-you-could-really-call-a-nuclear-war/#respondWed, 28 Mar 2018 03:07:50 +0000http://sciencefictional.net/?p=2301Continue reading "“Nothing you could really call a nuclear war…”"]]>“No comets crashing, nothing you could really call a nuclear war. Just everything else, tangled in the changing climate: droughts, water shortages, crop failures, honeybees gone like they almost were now, collapse of other keystone species, every last alpha predator gone, antibiotics doing even less than they already did, diseases that were never quite the one big pandemic but big enough to be historic events in themselves. And all of it around people: how people were, how many of them there were, how they’d changed things just by being there.”

]]>https://sciencefictional.net/2018/03/28/nothing-you-could-really-call-a-nuclear-war/feed/0tezby29513269_10156013135941285_4715717512999514560_nA True Alliance of Man and Naturehttps://sciencefictional.net/2018/03/27/a-true-alliance-of-man-and-nature/
https://sciencefictional.net/2018/03/27/a-true-alliance-of-man-and-nature/#respondTue, 27 Mar 2018 03:56:07 +0000http://sciencefictional.net/?p=2295Continue reading "A True Alliance of Man and Nature"]]>“A huge manmade mountain measuring 420 meters long, 270 meters wide, 38 meters high and elliptical in shape was planted with eleven thousand trees by eleven thousand people from all over the world at the Pinziö gravel pits near Ylöjärvi, Finland, as part of a massive earthwork and land reclamation project by environmental artist Agnes Denes. The project was officially announced by the Finnish government at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro on Earth Environment Day, June 5, 1992, as Finland’s contribution to help alleviate the world’s ecological stress. Sponsored by the United Nations Environment Program and the Finnish Ministry of the Environment, Tree Mountain is protected land to be maintained for four centuries, eventually creating a virgin forest. The trees are planted in an intricate mathematical pattern derived from a combination of the golden section and the pineapple/sunflower system designed by the artist. Even though infinitely more complex, it is reminiscent of ancient earth patterns.

“Tree Mountain is the largest monument on earth that is international in scope, unparalleled in duration, and not dedicated to the human ego, but to benefit future generations with a meaningful legacy. People who planted the trees received certificates acknowledging them as custodians of the trees. The certificate is an inheritable document valid for twenty or more generations in the future – the first such document involving the future in human history. The project is innovative nationally and worldwide—the first such document in human history. This is the very first time in Finland and among the first ones in the world when an artist restores environmental damage with ecological art planned for this and future generations.

“Tree Mountain, conceived in 1982, affirms humanity’s commitment to the future well being of ecological, social and cultural life on the planet. It is designed to unite the human intellect with the majesty of nature. Tree Mountain was dedicated in June, 1996 by the President of Finland, other heads of state, and people from everywhere.”

“The development of Tree Mountain took 14 years from the original design concept in 1982, to its commissioning by the Finnish government at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992— to its completion in 1996 in middle Finland. A mountain needed to be built to design specifications, which by itself took over four years and was the restitution work of a mine that had destroyed the land through resource extraction. The process of bioremediation restores the land from resource extraction use to one in harmony with nature, in this case, the creation of a virgin forest. The planting of trees holds the land from erosion, enhances oxygen production and provides home for wildlife. This takes time and it is one of the reasons why Tree Mountain must remain undisturbed for centuries. The certificate the planters received are numbered and reach 400 years into the future as it takes that long for the ecosystem to establish itself. It is an inheritable document that connects the eleven thousand planters and their descendents reaching into millions, connected by their trees. This family is the original green generation, the term that became so popular recently in people’s terminology. This family from around the world are proud custodians of the trees that bear their names and grow through the centuries to a lush manmade virgin forest. Tree Mountain is a collaborative work, from its intricate landscaping and forestry to the funding and contractual agreements for its strange, unheard-of land-use of four centuries. The collaboration expands as eleven thousand people come together to plant the trees that bear their names and remain their property through succeeding generations. The trees can change ownership—people can leave their tree to their heirs, or transfer it by other means, even be buried under it—but Tree Mountain itself can never be owned or sold, nor can the trees be moved from the forest. The trees are made by nature, the mathematical positioning created by the human intellect to form a true alliance of man and nature.”

]]>https://sciencefictional.net/2018/03/27/a-true-alliance-of-man-and-nature/feed/0tezbyworks4works5Surface Trawlshttps://sciencefictional.net/2018/03/23/surface-trawls/
https://sciencefictional.net/2018/03/23/surface-trawls/#respondFri, 23 Mar 2018 04:59:15 +0000http://sciencefictional.net/?p=2292Continue reading "Surface Trawls"]]>“Publication of the garbage patch study coincided with a new report from Britain, Foresight Future of the Sea, that found plastic pollution in the ocean could triple by 2050 unless a “major response” is mounted to prevent plastic from reaching the ocean. The report declared plastic pollution to be one of the main environmental threats to the seas, along with sea-level rise and warming oceans.

“The study included two aerial surveys in October of 2016 that took 7,000 images, and 652 ocean surface trawls conducted in July, August, and September of 2015 by 18 vessels.

“The surface trawls also filled in the rest of the story.

“Fifty plastic items collected had a readable production date: One from 1977, seven from the 1980s, 17 from the 1990s, 24 from the 2000s, and one from 2010. Researchers also found 386 objects with recognizable words or sentences in nine different languages.

“The writing on a third of the objects was Japanese and another third was Chinese. The country of production was readable on 41 objects, showing they were manufactured in 12 different nations.

“The study also concluded that plastic pollution is “increasing exponentially and at a faster rate than in surrounding waters.” Others are not as confident that the conclusion indicates a dramatic change in distribution of marine debris. Much of the world’s marine debris is believed to lie in the coastal regions, not in the middle of oceans.

“Leonard says he was impressed with the scope of the study. “It’s strong science,” he says. “But at the same time, in this field, the harder we look, the more plastic we find.”

]]>https://sciencefictional.net/2018/03/23/surface-trawls/feed/0tezbyAixi-Terra-Espacial-Europea-ESA_1235286778_25523962_900x636“I don’t know”https://sciencefictional.net/2018/03/19/i-dont-know/
https://sciencefictional.net/2018/03/19/i-dont-know/#respondMon, 19 Mar 2018 07:40:28 +0000http://sciencefictional.net/?p=2289Continue reading "“I don’t know”"]]>“Annihilation’s great achievement is in exploring these themes through object embodiment, rather than in words. Lena returns to Area X but can only respond to her interrogator’s questions with, “I don’t know.” The self is an unknowable thing, in some ways, just as one can never truly reach the lighthouse. Lena goes back to the version of Kane who returned from the Shimmer, and they embrace. But they are left with an unanswerable question: “Who are you?”

“One answer to this question is that we are all just beings made of cells, and therefore mortal. Just as cells split to create life, Lena observes, each cell also contains within it the fault that leads to senescence and death. Mortality is thus the defining feature of life’s basic unit: It’s in our genes. When genes are toyed with, as in the Shimmer, the problem of life and mortality comes into sharper focus. Each of the women on the mission contains within herself a drive for self-destruction: nobody enters the Shimmer without one, Dr. Ventress observes. And so each explorer heads inexorably towards the lighthouse—Woolf’s symbol for desire—but also towards death.

“One of the most intriguing details in Annihilation is a tattoo that appears and disappears on Lena’s arm. It’s in a figure-eight shape, like an infinity symbol, but its details show an ouroboros—a snake eating its tail. The tattoo also appears on Anya the paramedic sometimes, and on Kane. The Shimmer seems to work like the patch tool in Photoshop, flinging little bits of self around, redistributing them. The ouroboros is a symbol for the continual flow of death into life into death into life, just as the cells which seed death inside us also split to create life…”

Text: Annihilation Is a Brilliant Splicing of Woolf With Cronenberg, The New Republic.

]]>https://sciencefictional.net/2018/03/19/i-dont-know/feed/0tezbythe-nymph-echoIntense Emotions Hurthttps://sciencefictional.net/2018/03/12/intense-emotions-hurt/
https://sciencefictional.net/2018/03/12/intense-emotions-hurt/#respondMon, 12 Mar 2018 04:00:03 +0000http://sciencefictional.net/?p=2262Continue reading "Intense Emotions Hurt"]]>“One of the most important through-lines this film and its predecessor share is the way in which both principal antagonists regard replicants as their “children”. It’s important for a lot of reasons, but for my purposes it’s important for one very specific reason, which is that their children are the direct product of how they’ve been treated by their parents.

“Tyrell and Wallace are both the abusive, neglectful fathers of abused, neglected children, and it shows most piercingly in how their children process – and fail to process – emotion. This manifests a bit differently in each film, and I’d argue much more clearly in the second, but it’s always there. As fathers, they appear to imagine themselves as benevolent and caring, at least to some degree. When Tyrell finally encounters Roy Batty, at first he’s gentle with his prodigal son. What he doesn’t understand until it’s far too late is that Roy really has come looking for his father. He wants more life, but he also wants to understand why he’s alive at all, what his value is, what he’s worth, and he needs that worth to be more than the sum of his use.

“He was never truly loved, never valued, and when he’s brought face to face with that, he reacts how you should expect. Throughout the rest of the film he’s a burning core of wildly expressed emotion, boomeranging from rage to grief to glee to pain to scorn to hatred and finally to peace. As with K, he’s all or he’s nothing. He’s calm or he’s tearing the world apart.

“Replicants exist in an uncomfortable limbo between having a parent and having none, between knowledge of a distant and detached creator and the knowledge that they’ve always been alone. There’s obviously a god-thing going on here, and it’s not especially subtle, but there are also deeper questions at work regarding what this limbo actually does to a thinking, feeling entity.

Implanted memories might function as a cushion, but they don’t make up for a parent who was never there, and they don’t paper over the knowledge that you were created to be a thing with no other purpose beyond the purely functional.

“The horror in which replicants live is to be fully and completely aware of all of this, of the falseness of the experiences that were given to them to train their feelings, and of their inability to be genuinely close to anyone.

“Blade Runner is telling a story in significant part about how ruinous it is to be denied a personal history. Survivors of child abuse have been denied the same thing in a lot of ways: the time in which children are supposed to be learning what it is to feel healthy emotion and form healthy connections is disrupted and destroyed, and difficulty in processing intense emotion is a common result. That includes difficulty in understanding what emotions even are, in the task of articulating them to oneself. What we can’t articulate or understand, we can’t control. And intense emotion is terrifying, because intense emotion hurts.”

]]>https://sciencefictional.net/2018/03/12/intense-emotions-hurt/feed/0tezbyBVcomparisonThe Thingness of All Living Thingshttps://sciencefictional.net/2018/03/08/the-thingness-of-all-living-things/
https://sciencefictional.net/2018/03/08/the-thingness-of-all-living-things/#respondWed, 07 Mar 2018 23:00:23 +0000http://sciencefictional.net/?p=2259Continue reading "The Thingness of All Living Things"]]>“The notion expressed by Harrison Ford that spectators require a “human being on screen” with whom to connect is thus challenged by Villeneuve. In Blade Runner 2049, even the blade runners are copycats. “How does it feel killing your own kind?” Morton asks K before being retired. “I don’t mind my own kind because we don’t run,” K says. “Only older models do.” A hierarchy of being is erected in Blade Runner 2049. “The world is built on a wall that separates kind,” Lt. Joshi informs K. “Tell either side there’s no wall – you bought a war.” The humans of Blade Runner, sitting atop that social pyramid, are preceded by different classes of replicants (Nexus-6, Nexus-7, Nexus-8, etc.), and further down are robots, machines, and holograms. These physiologically and materially diverse beings inhabit a hyper-stratified society teetering on the brink of a civil war. “Am I the only one who can see the fucking sunrise here?” Lt. Joshi exclaims, fearing others might discover Rachael’s half-human child. “This breaks the world.” Beings of all kinds, when confronted by questions of identity and social difference, tribalize. The words “fuck off skinner” are aptly scribbled on the door to K’s apartment. The schismatic dystopia of 2049 reflects unto audiences the cultural polarities of their own historical moment. Even Lt. Joshi’s analogy of a society built on a wall is charged with racialized political innuendo.

“If, in Blade Runner, that wall partitioned replicants from humans, in 2049, it is far more stratified, not only separating people from replicants, but replicants from other replicants, holograms from other holograms. The inhabitants of Villeneuve’s dystopia maintain stability by staying walled off from one another. Yet the more gradated any hierarchy – the more sprawling a wall – the greater the possibility exists for transgression, for unexpected cross-border play. An enlarged surface area only increases opportunities for its permeability. Thus, much more so than its predecessor, Blade Runner 2049 inhabits a gray area, an in-between space where “species” meet: gestating replicants, humanlike holograms, and artificial blade runners. In doing so, it resists Lt. Joshi’s fatalistic hypothesis. Villeneuve’s Blade Runner calls not for a sublimation or homogenization of social difference, but for its intensification. The film reveals (and revels in) the shared “thingliness” of all (non-)living beings. Everything around us – ourselves included – is composed of matter, of matter that matters. Blade Runner 2049 thus offers a counter-narrative to our present-day politics of tribalism. It proffers a post-humanist egalitarianism by amplifying and celebrating its protagonists’ diversity.”